Lisa Marie vs. Jacko

Jacko may have left the building, but leave it to his ex-wife to tell him who's bad.

Out to promote her debut album, To Whom It May Concern, Lisa Marie Presley finally came clean about her bizarre mid-'90s merger, um, marriage, to Michael Jackson, admitting she left him because of his strange behavior.

In a series of interviews this week, the spawn of Elvis said she was indeed smitten with Jackson, her second husband, and the two of them did sleep together (try not to imagine it, if you can).

"I can't say what his intentions were, but I can tell you mine was that I absolutely fell in love with him and fell into this whole thing which I'm not proud of now," Presley, 35, told Rolling Stone magazine for its cover story hitting newsstands on Thursday.

Their union, however, quickly began to unravel when Presley felt that Jackson was using her to try and revive his sagging career, which had taken a hit due to allegations of child molestation. She says she now questions his motivations behind their marriage--and that now famous smooch at the 1994 MTV Music Video Awards.

Presley said the kiss was the idea of Jackson's manager, and she was "naïve" enough to go along with it. It's only now, she said, that she's realizing why people had suspicious minds about whether their love was genuine.

"It took me a while to realize that maybe he manipulated stories or did things for public reasons, and that I was getting dragged into it," Presley told this week's edition of Newsweek. "I can see that now...I can't say what his intentions were with me, but I can say it was the most real thing I think he's had."

Eventually, she said, it got to the point where Jackson would beat it for weeks at a time, leaving her home alone and tracking his whereabouts through press accounts. Presley says one of the final straws came when her ever-morphing hubby claimed, in an interview with TV Guide, that her dad, the King, had a nose job.

"I started asking questions, and it was always a different story," Presley told Newsweek, regarding the time Jackson was hospitalized but refused to explain what was wrong with him. "He said I was 'causing trouble' and 'stirring up problems.' He told me, 'You're making my heart rate go up,' and asked me to go home, and I said, 'Good. I want out.'

"This person is one of the biggest entertainers out there. He is not stupid. He's very charming when he wants to be, and when you go into his world, you step into this whole other realm," Presley continued. "I could tell you all about the craziness--all these things that were odd, different, evil or not cool--but it still took me two and a half years to get my head out of it."

According to Presley, she went into a two-year depression after they divorced, but the experience was good inspiration for her music. In the track "Disciple," she vents about his "masturbative ways," though she avoids calling him a bad guy in real-life.

With Presley bashing him right and left, and scheduled to get up close and personal in an interview with Diane Sawyer in ABC's Primetime tonight, Jackson released a statement today through his publicist.

"Michael Jackson wishes Lisa Marie all the best in the world. However, as to a comment on anything to do with their marriage, as a gentleman, Michael prefers not to respond," the Jacko camp said.

In the Primetime interview, Presley also talks about her short-lived marriage to actor Nicolas Cage. When Sawyer asked if she really tossed a $65,000 engagement ring into the Pacific while on Cage's yacht (which reportedly prompted Cage to send divers on a failed mission to retrieve), Presley candidly quipped: "It was more than $65,000."

The budding singer also said that--like her relationship with Jackson--all the commitments that go along with being a celebrity spouse, including the omnipresent entourage, took a toll on her and Cage, too, and led to their split after only 100 days.

Finally, Presley said growing up in Graceland wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

"Thousands of people were coming through my house to look at his body. I remember watching them all and being so confused. I couldn't really have my own grieving time," she told Newsweek. She said she was a "deep, dark kid who was always melancholy."

If Presley can generate as many record sales as headlines, she should make her daddy proud. So far, so good. While her album doesn't hits stores until next Tuesday, her first single, "Lights Out," has already landed in the number 24 spot on the Radio & Records Hot AC airplay chart.

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